Of Broken Cups

I drink tea like some men
might drink a god
everyday from an earth-toned cup
steaming wabi-sabi from Japanese lips.
Green tea for pleasure
and ruby-black Irish
at five in the morning;
such an ordinary, revelatory
religion

of simply what sustains the heart.

Now the cup is broken, cracking
its ceramic skull on the floor
as it tumbles from the desk—
my life has broken with it,
this, the last ritual act of separation.

What we try to hold will crumble,
trickle from the hands like water
squeezed in the palm for possession—
this poem is dying even as it’s written.
One day, I too, will be dust
and light
and faded dreams dissolved into the earth.

Requiem for the broken cup—
in life it was round and open,
like a door
allowing steam and heat and tea
to part the lips and praise
the mouth to singing.

I too wish to be a door before I go;
round and open,
a vessel for something greater—
before I fall and spill into the soil.